Gundappa Viswanath praises Virat Kohli's captaincy but wants him to improve his batting

Former Indian batsman believes Kohli still needs to improve his batting, despite his flourishing captaincy

Kohli has been lacklustre with the bat, but impressive as India’s Test skipper

Virat Kohli, who might have had a bad run with the bad has shown what he can do as a captain. Former Indian batsman Gundappa Viswanath has come in support and has praised him for his captaincy skills but still feels that he needs to improve upon as a batsman before the Australian Tour as reported by NDTV Sports.

Kohli who is having a rough time with his bat has to be happy with his captaincy performance recently. Gundappa believes that the batsman is repeating is mistakes over and over again which could be a huge problem for India in Australia.

Viswanath said: “Virat needs to learn to stay at the wicket in Tests. He has strokes all around and sometimes he plays one too many. He gets out the same way too many times. He must avoid that.”

India’s Test skipper has often been caught behind or in the slip cordon thanks to his proclivity to chase wide balls. Although it is not a major technical flaw, Viswanath believes that he needs to work on it and tweak his approach.

He further added, “"It requires major adjustment. But to start with, instead of playing towards cover and cover point he should play straight and to mid-off. And instead of following the ball, he should let it go.”

Kohli’s last tour of Australia wasn’t impressive as he scored only 29 runs in 4 matches of the Carlton Tri-Series. In 2015, Kohli has scored 624 runs in 20 matches at an average of 36.35 with only 2 centuries and a single half century.

Talking about his captaincy, the former Indian player, who was impressed, said, “He has the qualities needed for a good captain. He is giving chance for players to excel. If he feels strongly about something, he does it, Virat believes in horses for courses and takes good decisions.

“If he wants to play five bowlers, he will. If he wants to play spinners on a wicket that suits them, he is not afraid to ignore seamers.”

India's limited-overs tour of Australia, which consists of 5 ODIs and 3 T20s begins on January 12. With the burden of captaincy weighing heavily on MS Dhoni’s shoulders, Indian supporters will be hoping that Kohli, who won’t be under the pressure of captaincy will kick 2016 off with a bang.